Battle Spot Special Usage Stats – January 2016

Hey there Hat Lovers,

Today’s post is something special. This is VGC with Hats’ 100th post on the site. And for this 100th post, we’ll be reporting some usage statistics from the Battle Spot Special Ladder so far. Nuggetbridge user Ferretsroq has made some more detailed Battle Spot information available, and being the stats junkie that I am, how could I not take a look?

The data are currently not super digestable and while I could look through and pull out Top 20 used moves etc… I think the Top 10 Items, Moves, Abilities, and Natures are fine to get a sense of most Pokemon’s preferences. These data are presented in a far more digestable fashion directly on the Pokemon website’s Battle Spot usage page, so I’d advise using the following list and that page together to get a more complete sense of the metagame.

What I’ll be presenting for everyone today is a list of the most used Pokemon in the format, extending down to Pokemon that appear on more than 1% of teams. These data come from ~39,000 teams entering games on Battlespot and so 1% usage means the Pokemon was used a minimum of ~390 times. These data also come only from Pokemon used in a battle, and not from Pokemon that were simply on a team but never chosen (awaiting 100% confirmation). There were 37 Pokemon used on >1% of teams in this dataset, 18 Pokemon used on >5% of teams, and 11 Pokemon used on >10% of teams.

So without further ado, here are the Top Pokemon used on Battlespot Special in January 2016:

What’s nice about this list is that the Top __ used Pokemon 3ds.pokemon-gl.com only extends down to #12, while this list extends all the way to 229 if you let it. After all, Liepard sits at #12 with 3,492 total usage, while Gengar sits at #13 with 3,322 total usage. Is Gengar’s usage really that different from Liepard’s? What about #14 Mawile at 3,101?

Hopefully everyone finds this list useful as a way to get a more complete picture of what Pokemon are worth having answers to, and what Pokemon are a fair bit more obscure. I’d say that knowing what your team can do to deal with the threats presented by all 37 of these Pokemon is valuable as we head into Regionals. Even nearing the bottom of the list, Clefairy’s Friends Guard in a hyper aggressive format, Infernape’s fast Fake Out, Close Combat, and niche of Feint, and Bronzong’s Steel typing for a Trick Room setter make them relevant considerations for folks building teams. Pokemon that just barely missed this list (e.g. Gothitelle, Lopunny, Raichu, Metagross) are all also viable Pokemon that offer unique tools to teambuilders, so by no means should you limit yourself to trying out these 37.

Indeed, I’ve been wrestling with an article for a while now that covers some of the more obscure choices in the format, which includes Raichu, Lopunny, and Metagross. So it’s kind of nice to see them just bordering on obscurity here. Maybe one day I’ll bring myself to actually post it.

In the meantime, Winter Regionals are coming up fast! We’re also in the midst of the International Challenge January, so it’ll be interesting to compare those data with this dataset. Good luck to everyone competing in the IC! I forgot to register, so I won’t be meeting you in battle this time around >.>

Cheers,

Crawdaunt out

p.s. I’ve also uploaded the data in spreadsheet form for anyone who wants to look past #37 on the usage list. You can download the file here:January Battlespot Usage Stats